richx
Active Member
- Joined
- Nov 30, 2018
- Messages
- 385
- Reaction score
- 213
- Country
- Malaysia
- Dash Cam
- A129 Duo, A139, Mola N3, A119v2, B4K
This is a $30 dashcam from AliExpress. It's pretty much rock-bottom priced, and it seems like nobody has given it any coverage so I thought I might write something about it.
English product info page
Chinese product info page
AliExpress purchase page
The dual-naming is a bit confusing because on DDPai's English language section, the A2 is grouped under the Mola product range while the Chinese language section, it is grouped under the "9 Eagles" product range. Anyway, after 4 weeks of waiting for delivery the item finally arrived. The box is somewhat oversized for its content. The retail pack contains the dashcam body, adhesive mount with one direction swivel (up-down), and a fuse-tap power supply cable. A simple user manual is also included, but did not come with memory card nor static film for the windscreen.
The power cable could be problematic for some cars, because it is already pre-terminated with mini fuse taps. So you are expected to extract an existing fuse of the same value and plug this in its place. The device is protected by another set of inline fuses (glass tube type) further up the cables. Oddly enough, the cable terminates to the dashcam body via a micro USB connector. If you accidentally plugged this tip into another device, it could potentially fry that device because this carries 12v power from the car. I suppose they didn't want to provide a separate power receptacle on the dashcam body to reduce cost (which is odd, because the Mini One had both stereo jack power input and micro USB to copy files out).
Here it is installed in the same vehicle I had been testing the other two DDPai entry-level products. From left to right, the A2, Mola N3 and Mini One.
Once powered up and phone app connected, the parking recording options are already there and the selectable options are the same as on the Mola N3.
Sample video from overcast day after the rain had stopped. Files produced were ~10 MB/sec broken up into 1-minute files as is typical of other DDPai products. There's also no options to change these parameters. H.265 encoding is also unavailable. Microphone is also very soft, given that I had music playing quite loudly and YouTube didn't flag a copyright infringement on my video.
Sample video when time lapse parking mode is in action ("shrink the video").
Sample still shot from the same scene as the parking mode video. You might want to click to enlarge.
250px crops of samples to compare with the other two cameras I had mounted. OK, the "centre" crop isn't exactly centre of frame, but I wanted to show something quite near and had some details you could judge the image by. Not immediately obvious is that the A2's lens exhibits much less purple/yellow fringing than the other two products. The Mola N3 makes up for this by giving more resolution/details, but under some circumstances the A2 resolves more details than the Mini One due to this. Overall its hard to beat the extra resolution offered by the Mola N3's 5MP sensor, but the A2 does pull ahead of the Mini One (both being 2MP sensors, and despite the Mini One having Starvis IMX307).
Second comparison was taken in an unlit multi-storey parking while it was raining heavily outside, so it was quite dark perhaps similar to a lit road at night. I didn't have the same shot taken from Mini One because somewhere in between, the mount had fallen off and I hadn't re-applied new adhesive tape yet. But I think given the day-time comparison, there's really not much point.
Conclusion: cheap camera with parking recording mode. Optics show promise but again like the Mini One, is held back by HiSilicon's Hi3516 V100 with 30 Mbps peak performance on its video encoding hardware. It's also sad that the firmware decided to pad the file up to 10 MB/sec, otherwise at 3.75 MB/sec rate a 32GB card could have recorded for much longer while containing about the same level of detail.
English product info page
Chinese product info page
AliExpress purchase page
The dual-naming is a bit confusing because on DDPai's English language section, the A2 is grouped under the Mola product range while the Chinese language section, it is grouped under the "9 Eagles" product range. Anyway, after 4 weeks of waiting for delivery the item finally arrived. The box is somewhat oversized for its content. The retail pack contains the dashcam body, adhesive mount with one direction swivel (up-down), and a fuse-tap power supply cable. A simple user manual is also included, but did not come with memory card nor static film for the windscreen.
The power cable could be problematic for some cars, because it is already pre-terminated with mini fuse taps. So you are expected to extract an existing fuse of the same value and plug this in its place. The device is protected by another set of inline fuses (glass tube type) further up the cables. Oddly enough, the cable terminates to the dashcam body via a micro USB connector. If you accidentally plugged this tip into another device, it could potentially fry that device because this carries 12v power from the car. I suppose they didn't want to provide a separate power receptacle on the dashcam body to reduce cost (which is odd, because the Mini One had both stereo jack power input and micro USB to copy files out).
Here it is installed in the same vehicle I had been testing the other two DDPai entry-level products. From left to right, the A2, Mola N3 and Mini One.
Once powered up and phone app connected, the parking recording options are already there and the selectable options are the same as on the Mola N3.
Sample video from overcast day after the rain had stopped. Files produced were ~10 MB/sec broken up into 1-minute files as is typical of other DDPai products. There's also no options to change these parameters. H.265 encoding is also unavailable. Microphone is also very soft, given that I had music playing quite loudly and YouTube didn't flag a copyright infringement on my video.
Sample video when time lapse parking mode is in action ("shrink the video").
Sample still shot from the same scene as the parking mode video. You might want to click to enlarge.
250px crops of samples to compare with the other two cameras I had mounted. OK, the "centre" crop isn't exactly centre of frame, but I wanted to show something quite near and had some details you could judge the image by. Not immediately obvious is that the A2's lens exhibits much less purple/yellow fringing than the other two products. The Mola N3 makes up for this by giving more resolution/details, but under some circumstances the A2 resolves more details than the Mini One due to this. Overall its hard to beat the extra resolution offered by the Mola N3's 5MP sensor, but the A2 does pull ahead of the Mini One (both being 2MP sensors, and despite the Mini One having Starvis IMX307).
Second comparison was taken in an unlit multi-storey parking while it was raining heavily outside, so it was quite dark perhaps similar to a lit road at night. I didn't have the same shot taken from Mini One because somewhere in between, the mount had fallen off and I hadn't re-applied new adhesive tape yet. But I think given the day-time comparison, there's really not much point.
Conclusion: cheap camera with parking recording mode. Optics show promise but again like the Mini One, is held back by HiSilicon's Hi3516 V100 with 30 Mbps peak performance on its video encoding hardware. It's also sad that the firmware decided to pad the file up to 10 MB/sec, otherwise at 3.75 MB/sec rate a 32GB card could have recorded for much longer while containing about the same level of detail.
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